


No Second Chances

by KinkyGrrlDiane (AnneTaylor)



Series: Replicants series [1]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:14:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21947896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnneTaylor/pseuds/KinkyGrrlDiane
Summary: Skinner wakes up in a strange room. He remembers getting really drunk the night before, and taking some pills. Then things get weird, and he has to figure out what is real and what is fantasy before it's too late and the world as we know it disappears in a conflagration of alien domination.
Relationships: Alex Krycek/Walter Skinner
Series: Replicants series [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1580251
Kudos: 5





	No Second Chances

**Author's Note:**

> I've always loved re-reading this story. It's one of my better plotlines. The world twists in on itself over and over until until at times it feels like I can no longer remember what is real and what is fantasy. I *wrote* it and I still get lost in it.
> 
> Writing it felt like that, too. I remember that I had no idea what was actually going on. One minute I would be certain that it was all an illusion, that the Consortium and Alex Krycek were just fucking with Walter's head. The next, everything would change and yet another layer of reality would be ripped away, leaving the world an even darker place than it was before. Again and again until I had lost track of everything and could do nothing more than let the words continue to flow so I could find out how it all ended.
> 
> I hope you all enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

I open my eyes. They sting like a son-of-a-bitch and there’s not much light so it’s a while before I get a good look at my surroundings.

Cheap motel room. God, please tell me I didn’t spend the night with another prostitute. Was I drinking last night? I…don’t remember.

With some difficulty, I manage to turn my head. The bed beside me is empty. You know your life has hit a new all-time low when you wake up in a strange motel room with no memory of how you got there and all you can think is “thank god there’s no corpse in the bed with me.”

My body feels heavy and numb. I can’t feel my arms or legs. In fact, I can’t feel anything below my neck. There’s a bottle of pills on the table beside the bed. I must have taken some.

Some of the cobwebs begin to drop away from my brain. I do a more careful inspection of the room and I realize that it probably isn’t a motel room. Wrong kind of door, wrong kind of furniture. Boarding house? Somebody’s apartment?

Where am I? How did I get here? The answers are lurking just below the surface of my memory, but every time I start looking more closely, my mind grows as heavy as my body and I find myself sucked back down into this vaguely disturbing apathy.

I used to be a better man than this. Once upon a time I would have fought myself free of this drugged haze, forced myself to stagger to my feet. I wonder where my gun is.

Once upon a time I was a fighter. Enemies above and below. I knew that the Director had been bought out by that chain smoking bastard and his cronies, but I didn’t let it stop me from giving Mulder and Scully my support, however covertly.

My Director was dirty. My agents turned on me. Straus and Connors. Krycek. Spender. McVale. Donnoly.

Krycek.

I shouldn’t have done it. It’s funny how such a small thing, such a tiny gesture, could have had such a profound effect on my life.

I never meant to pull the trigger. I took a bead on his head, figuring the threat would be enough to make him drop the gun.

The look in his eyes. No one was that good an actor. 

Krycek wasn’t a cold blooded killer in the beginning. He was just a kid. A good agent, if a little cocky. Something happened to him, changed him.

When he stole the DAT tape from me he was still the Alex Krycek I remembered. There was a scared, wild look in his eyes just before he started hitting me. As if something was out of control.

_When Mulder brought him to my apartment, I put him out on my balcony, more for Mulder’s benefit than because I wanted him there. All night long, he never said a word, just sat in tight-lipped silence, even after I brought him back in and handcuffed him to the leg of my heavy antique dresser._

He never told me who he was working for, or why. I offered to take custody of him from Mulder, if only he’d come clean. Confide in me. Guess I was still hoping he’d turn out to be a decent kid who was in over his head.

I was so pissed at him I put him back out on the balcony before I left for work that morning. It was a stupid thing to do, I can admit that now. Guess I’ve made more than one bad decision when it comes to Krycek.

I wonder if Mulder thinks I left him chained out on the balcony all night. He never asked.

The Krycek who came to me years later, offering to trade Mulder’s cure for the life of Scully’s unborn child…he was a different man. More in control. Colder. Malice was the only emotion which seemed natural to him, all the others were brought out with deliberate precision. Smiles that never reached past his lips. The casual, practiced gestures. Always calculated for the effect. Usually aimed at Mulder.

I never knew about his arm. Not until there was nothing left of him but a corpse with a glassy-eyed look of surprise in eyes that used to be as green as the sea. I went to check his pulse and found the unliving plastic that dangled from his limp shoulder.

Maybe he blamed Mulder for the amputation. Mulder seemed to think so, but Mulder would never tell me anything about how it happened, or when. The scars were years old when I finally got a good look at them; my guess would be that it happened not long after Mulder dragged him out of my apartment. If only I’d stayed, told Mulder I was assuming custody of Krycek. Kept him with me, wearing him down gently, reminding him of whom he had been once. I missed my last chance that day, locking him outside like a dog and walking away from him.

The look in his eyes as I closed the door…

Was it Mulder he blamed the most, or me? When Mulder was abducted, was it Mulder that he was getting revenge on, or me? Could he have known what it would do to me to lose Mulder the way I did? Was he listening from somewhere nearby while I screamed Mulder’s name? Was he there? Certainly, he knew that I would have traded my very soul to get him back, safe and undamaged, for Scully and their unborn child. He knew how the guilt had worn me down. I don’t think he ever thought I’d take him up on his offer to trade the baby for Mulder; he just made it to torment me.

And when Mulder didn’t die, he came back later to finish the job. He wanted both of us dead.

The look in his eyes as the elevator door closed…

I never meant to kill him, even though I knew he wanted us dead. But when he looked up at me over the barrel of my gun, smiling that cold, secret smile that meant he knew I wouldn’t kill him, and that Mulder was a dead man and I was a dead man…

The look in his eyes as I pulled the trigger…

I’ll never know why I fired the third time.

Bits and pieces of memory whirl in my brain, like stinging sand hurled by a hot and bitter wind.

A month ago, the Director finally decided I was enough of an annoyance to have me forcibly retired. I fought it, of course, but nobody was ever in doubt as to the outcome. Not even me.

There wasn’t much to stay for, in any case. Doggett and Reyes are good agents, but they lack Mulder’s instinct for separating the wheat from the chaff. The cases they pursue are bizarre, but have no real significance. Since they aren’t a threat to the Consortium, they don’t need my protection.

Mulder and Scully have long since disappeared. I got one brief call from Scully about a year ago. They found William. I wish them well. God knows if anyone deserves a peaceful life it’s those two, after all they’ve been through. All we’ve been through. Scully did send a note saying that she and Mulder would try to make it to D.C. to lend moral support for my retirement party. I’m not holding my breath. It’s better if they stay away, really.

Yesterday was…my anniversary. Sharon’s and mine. Would have been. And tomorrow is my last day at the Hoover. I vaguely remember cleaning out my desk, throwing everything in a box and loading it in the back of my car. I remember going down to Vonnegut’s pub, sitting in a dark corner booth and drinking until the waitress refused to bring me any more vodka.

Not sure why it was vodka I was drinking. I’ve never cared for the taste of it.

After stumbling into the dirty, crowded bathroom to piss for the dozenth time or so, I met a man. He gave me some pills. They’ll make you feel good, he promised me. They’ll make the pain go away. I took them. It had been so long since there was any good to feel. I remember thinking what a nice man he was…

…god…now I break out in a cold sweat just thinking about it. I was drunk off my ass and some dope pusher offers me pills and I take them…son of a bitch.

I remember… _walking down a narrow alleyway…rain pouring down…_

I remember… _fumbling with the door, trying to fit the key into the lock…_

_…someone behind me, he takes the key from my clumsy fingers…_

I remember the chink of glasses, toasting “absent friends”…

_…vomiting, bent over the toilet, nearly screaming as I retched, my stomach spasming in a hard, painful knot…_

_…a cool washcloth on my forehead…_

I was with a man last night. I remember his hands as they stripped off my clothes. His face…no…I can’t remember his face. I can’t.

We didn’t have sex. I’m pretty sure I would have remembered that, and, besides, I was too drunk and sick to perform. No residual soreness, so at least I wasn’t raped while I lay unconscious.

What does he want from me? I know he’s still here. On the other side of the door. Maybe having breakfast. Maybe cleaning his gun. Maybe…just waiting.

I’m too tired to worry about it. I should have the mother of all headaches, considering how much I drank last night, but there’s only a dull ache. I can feel the pain, but I’m so far away from it.

Am I dying?

Is this how the end of my life is going to read, a scandal fit only for some sleazy tabloid? Former Assistant Director with the FBI, found in the nude. Dead of a drug overdose.

My corpse won’t be as picturesque as hers reportedly was.

I’m naked beneath the sheets, but not restrained in any way. Guess he knew I wouldn’t be in any condition to put up a fight. Or maybe he doesn’t care. Or maybe he doesn’t mean me any harm, just a passing Samaritan who saw a drunken, wounded man in an alley and decided to bind up his wounds and put him on his ass…

There, now…and Kim thinks I don’t have a sense of humor.

I used to have a marvelous sense of humor. It got put away on the shelf the day I got my gun and my badge. The FBI doesn’t have a sense of humor. They told me so, at Quantico.

Now that I’m retired I guess I need to get it back down from the shelf and dust it off.

He doesn’t give me any warning, just a quiet click and the door swings open.

I expected some kind of disguise, maybe a beard or wig or something.

His eyes are just as green as I remembered.

“You’re dead,” I tell him.

I wait for the punchline.

_…no, you’re dead, Skinner…_

_…did you enjoy pulling the trigger, Walter?_

_…how does this gun barrel look from the other side..?_

He cocks his head and looks at me for a moment. “You get used to it,” he says, finally. “After a while it’s barely an inconvenience. You wake up in a vat of green goo and everything is back the way it was. See?” He shows me his left hand, flexing the fingers in leisurely contentment.

I stare at him, unable to comprehend what he’s saying. Green goo? He has two arms. “You’re not Alex Krycek.”

“Oh, I can assure you that I very definitely am Alex Krycek. The question is, who was the man you knew as Alex Krycek, and when did I replace him? Oh, by the way, I was just kidding about the green goo.”

“Then…how did you get your arm back?”

“I didn’t. Not the way you mean it.” Then he laughs. “You should see the look on your face,” he tells me. “Just kidding. It wasn’t really me, you know. It was Mulder.”

I struggle to wind my brain around his casual announcement, and the reference to Mulder, and he walks over to sit down on the bed beside me. Then stands up, quickly. “Damn,” he says. He wrinkles up his nose. “You’re going to take a bath before you get back in my car.”

“I…I’m not going anywhere with you.” Damn. My brain must be as numb as my legs, if that’s the best I can come up with.

“Yes, you are,” he tells me with an exasperated rolling of his eyes. “How else are you going to get out of here?”

“I’ll call a cab,” I tell him.

“Er, you do know the guy who gave you the blow job stole your wallet, right?”

“Nobody gave me a blow job,” I snap.

“Well, it wasn’t for lack of trying on your part, was it?”

“You were there?”

He rolls his eyes. “Of course I was there. What, do you think I just happened upon you in that alley by accident? C’mon, Walt, I know your brain has got to be a little fried from all the chemicals assaulting it last night, but you can do better than this,” he tells me patiently. “Start adding up the numbers.”

“You…were watching me at the bar. You followed me outside. You gave me…some kind of poison.”

Krycek shakes his head sadly. He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a little brown bottle and squints at the label. “Ipecac. Do you have any idea what mixing vodka and that cocktail of drugs you took would have done to you?” He tosses the bottle into a garbage can.

“Is that what I took? And since when do you get to call me Walt?” I add, with belated annoyance.

“Since I saved your life, asshole.” The corner of his mouth twitches. “And besides, I’ve seen you nekked,” he drawls.

I’d be embarrassed if I had the energy. “Look, Krycek…”

“Alex.”

“What’s this all about? Who was it I shot, if it wasn’t you?” _And why aren’t you more pissed about it?_

“Shape-shifter.”

“Why did you…why did it want to kill Mulder? And Scully’s baby? And where were you all this time? When did it replace you? Who sent it...?”

Krycek holds up his hands. “So many questions, so little time. We need to get rolling. Look, I’ll answer one question right now. And I’ll even tell you which one it should be. Ask me what it was that you dug up out of Mulder’s grave.”

My limbs start to go pins and needles in the wash of adrenaline. No, please God. He’s with Scully. It has to be Mulder. Scully would know if it wasn’t. Wouldn’t she? My voice is a harsh whisper. “What was it?”

Krycek leans closer and whispers back “It was Mulder.” He smirks at me and shakes his head. “Sad, so very sad. It isn’t even much of a challenge to fuck with your mind when you’re like this.”

Little bastard. Now he’s starting to piss me off. “Why can’t I feel my arms or legs?”

He comes to stand beside the bed. “This is why.” He reaches down to my throat and I feel him playing with something around my neck. It feels like a collar.

“What the hell…”

“Neural inhibitor. Very sophisticated device. Blocks all voluntary neural impulses from passing through it. Put it around your leg and your leg goes numb. Around your neck and voila…I have you just where I want you.”

“There’s no such thing,” I declare indignantly. “If there were they’d be using them in hospitals.”

He laughs softly. “Hospitals don’t have access to the people I have access to. If you could call them people,” he observes with a thoughtful air. “Hospitals can’t regenerate limbs, either,” he points out.

“You told me you never lost it.”

He cocks his head. “No, actually I told you I never got it back. Doesn’t matter. Glad to see that your brain is starting to function again. Yeah, you’re right. I’m just fucking with your mind. There are no aliens. There is no super-science. It’s all a smoke screen. Always was.”

“Then why can’t I feel my legs?”

“Spinal anesthetic. It’ll wear off after a while.”

“Then why is there a collar around my neck?”

He smirks at me. “I just wanted to see how you’d look in one. It’s you, Walter.” He plays with the object around my neck, turning it playfully and caressing my throat. “I should take pictures and send them to Mulder and Scully.”

“You know where they are?”

His look turns wary. “No. Why would I know where they are? I’m just fucking with you again.”

As he’s leaning over me I realize something else. “You’re wearing one, too.”

He straightens quickly. “No I’m not.” He tries to surreptitiously pull the collar of his jacket more snugly around his neck.

Is Krycek really as deranged as he seems, or is he just fucking with my mind? And how would I tell?

All I can do is keep asking him questions and hope he lets something slip, or gets tired of playing with me. “Did you drug me last night?”

“Nope.” He crosses his arms and gives me a pitying look. “You did that to yourself. What the hell got into you last night, Walt? Drunk enough to kill yourself from just the alcohol poisoning, and then you swallow a handful of pills. Did it never even occur to you to ask why some guy would give you pills and not ask for any money? Never mind. Obviously not. Do you have any idea where you’d be if I hadn’t brought you home and fed you…” he stops in mid-sentence, mouth open, then shakes his head “… that shit that makes you throw up?”

“Dead, probably.”

“I can’t leave you alone for even a month, can I?” he tsks. “Really, Walter, you’re lucky you have such a nice ass or I’d be tempted to just wash my hands of you.” He shakes his finger at me. “I wouldn’t do this for Mulder or Scully, you know. Well, maybe for Scully. She’s got a very nice ass. If you don’t mind freckles, that is. Do you know, she’s got freckles everywhere?” he says in a tone of wonder.

Something stirs in my memory…I get a vision of Scully’s indignant face, scarlet and outraged. Alex’s face, laughing…

“She hates it when you remind her of that,” I tell him.

His sharp gaze spears me to the bed. “How do you know that? Scully would never have shown Agent Alex Krycek her ass.” His green eyes encourage me as I struggle to pull more detail from the memory.

“She was…she was…” The hair on my scalp rises. I wonder if I’ve got goose bumps anyplace else. “She was in a tank of…green goo. You and I pulled her out. She was naked and in shock. You…made a crack about the freckles on her ass. She was so angry she slugged you.”

“Brought her out of shock pretty fast, though, didn’t it?” he points out with a sly grin. He touches his cheek reflexively. “She’s got one hell of a left hook.”

“You had a bruise for a week.” I stare at him. Things are moving in my brain. Too fast…no…too slow. I have to get it all back. I have to come back on line. Time is running out.

Something inside me struggles and mews, like a frightened animal. My safe, normal world is melting away, being replaced by something darker and more terrifying. I’m sinking beneath the unreal skin of reality, to a nightmare place. Men with eyes and mouths sewn shut. Alien creatures with shifting features, cruel men with eyes like flint and faces with no trace of human compassion or emotion, a world where nothing is what it seems to be.

Director Harris…a replicant. Deputy Director Kersh…a replicant. Names and faces of the men I used to meet every day in the hallways of the Hoover building. So many of them are not what they pretend to be. “We’re infiltrated. The FBI is completely infiltrated.”

Krycek sighs. “And the CIA. And the NSA. Homeland Security. The Senate. And just about every other place that makes a difference.”

For a moment I hover on the edge of decision. Two realities. A normal, safe world where humanity is in control and Alex is dead, or one where monsters have infiltrated our government and law enforcement bodies, and Alex…lives. I hover there, balanced on the brink. It’s my choice. I make the choice, and step into the nightmare.

“I’m your mole in the FBI,” I realize. “Was. I’m out of the Bureau. I’m no use any more,” I stare bitterly at the ceiling. “They tried to kill me last night, didn’t they?”

“Yeah. They did.” Krycek bends down and brushes his lips against my forehead before, removing the collar from around my neck.

Immediately, sensation begins to return to my limbs. I groan as my sprained stomach muscles protest. “Did you have to make me vomit so hard, Alex?” I gripe.

“I was pissed. You fucking idiot. They almost got you. After everything that we’ve worked for, all that we’ve been through and you almost did their work for them in a sleazy little bar.”

“I was…” How can I explain to him the depths of despair that I had fallen into? He must have erased my memories of all the time that we had spent together, but somehow it hadn’t been enough. “I’m sorry, Alex. I shot you…”

It’s his turn to look stricken. He crouches beside the bed. “I never should have let Mulder talk me into that,” he says savagely. “It was a fucking stupid thing to do.”

“Why...?”

“They were getting suspicious. We had to find a way to throw them off, to convince them that I was your enemy. They can’t read Mulder’s mind, or mine, when I wear this,” he strokes the collar around his neck “but they can read yours. That’s why you had to have the mind-wipe. The geeks did the best they could when we put the tape together, made it as realistic as they could, but threw in some shit that wouldn’t make any sense to you. Mulder told me that your subconscious would reject the memory on an emotional level because of that. I guess the fucker was wrong. He wasn’t as sure about that part as he had led me to believe…he didn’t tell me until later. If I’d known I never would have let him do it.”

“I remember that I didn’t care when I pulled the trigger. But I didn’t understand why it…bothered me so much afterward.” Bothered is an understatement. Fell completely apart is closer to the truth. Alex helps me sit up. “Dammit, I fucked up. If I’d been able to keep it together, the Director would never have been able to fire me.”

“Not your fault,” Alex insists. “Mulder’s. Dip-shit.”

Suddenly, I’m so tired. “What was the point of the mind-fuck games you were playing with me a minute ago?”

“No point. I just like to…” Alex’s face softens into apologetic lines. “Sorry. Gets to be a habit. I need to stimulate random memories to help the recall process, but I can’t be leading you. You’re very suggestible in that state and I needed you to be struggling to separate the real from the unreal. Otherwise you may end up with an incomplete set of memories, or memories that aren’t well anchored.” He toys absently with the collar that circles his own neck, shielding his thoughts from telepathic probes. Alien technology, modified by our labs to work for humans. “Decision time, Walt. Do you go back in, or are you done?”

“There’s no point. I’m out of the Bureau.”

“We could make our move. Off the Director and any other high-ups that work for them. After it’s all over we’ll present our evidence to the President, convince him that you are the only clean choice for Director, then we go to work patching up the other departments.”

“It would mean open war with Them.”

“It’s about time. Things aren’t going to get any better. Even Mister Rod-up-his-ass Secretary of Defense has to admit that keeping things quiet was a mistake.”

“That should make Mulder happy.”

“He was so happy he nearly creamed the brand new UFO boxers that Will gave him for his birthday. Here.” He tosses a pile of clothing down onto the bed. Get dressed. I’m going to take you to your place so you can pack.”

“Pack? Why?”

“It’s over, Walt. Time to go to ground. You’re not safe any more. We’ll just have to take the Hoover the hard way.”

I’m not sure what he’s talking about but it doesn’t sound good. I pick up my shirt. It smells like puke. “Don’t you have anything clean I could borrow?”

He scowls. “Consider it your penance for doing such an incredibly stupid thing…son of a fucking bitch, Walter…I can’t believe you took those pills..!” Without waiting for a reply he turns on his heel and strides out of the room.

Bemused, and more than a little ashamed, I dress myself in slacks and a shirt stinking of cigarette smoke and vomit and sweat.

His anger is reassuring. It feels honest and solid, like a spike driven into my heart, anchoring me to the painful realization that he cares what happens to me.

I open the door and find myself in a short hallway. There’s a bathroom at the end of it. Only one toothbrush on the counter, but there’s mouthwash…thank god for that. I take a good sized swig of the bright blue liquid and let the sting of Listerine scour the foul taste from my mouth.

The sound of it sloshing around in my mouth reminds me that I haven’t yet emptied my bladder and suddenly I can barely get the toilet lid up in time. _My bladder is getting old. Just like the rest of me._ I see my face in the mirror; new lines that I’m sure weren’t there a week ago, the sagging skin along my jawline, age spots on my forehead and cheeks. My hands wrinkle in a million places now, and my joints ache.

Whatever happened to the athletic, alert young agent from a small town in Minnesota? I can still remember a time when the shoulders of my suits felt constricted, and I used to be able to hold my own in a ring with men decades younger than myself.

I’ve aged, badly, in the past couple of years.

And for what? What was it I was supposed to have accomplished? I was the man inside, the only one left except for a few inexperienced bottom-line agents, most of them assigned away from D.C. Everyone else had been killed or forced out.

At least, that’s what one set of memories is telling me.

The other says nothing is wrong. The FBI is as it always has been. I’m old and unpopular with my superiors. I always have been. And now they’re retiring me.

Once I’m out, I’ll be of no use to any of them. Alex…Mulder…Scully…John. Oh, they’ll find me busy work to do, but not anything that contributes to the cause. I’m not a soldier any more and I’ve never been a scientist. I’m just a paper pusher. A diplomat, perhaps, but this enemy isn’t one we can negotiate with.

It’s all been for nothing. Letting them fuck with my brain, suck away my memories, all the wasted time that could have been spent with…

“Walter? Are you just going to stand there staring at yourself all morning?” Alex asks, his expression halfway between irritation and concern. “Is something wrong?”

Yes, Alex. Everything. Everything is wrong.

“You didn’t use my tooth brush, did you?” he asks with mock horror, and I am suddenly ambushed by a memory; _Alex’s fingers had been crushed by a rolling metal barrel, leaving him crippled for a time, unable to do fine work with either hand. I remember brushing his teeth for him, an act equal parts sensuous and ridiculous. Of his look of utter horror when I casually began using the brush on my own teeth when I was finished with his._

Alex is as fastidious as a cat. Even when we make love. It’s one of the things that intrigues me about him.

Confusion slaps me in the face. How long ago did Alex and I become lovers? How could it have happened? How long…”How long has it been, Alex? What…” I try to remember what year it is and draw a blank. “What’s the date?”

His face gets that closed off look that I hate. “You don’t know?” he asks warily. “I don’t think that’s a good sign, Walter.”

“Probably not.” There are other memories, older memories, of my fist driving into his gut, of the sight of him huddled and shivering on my balcony, of the feel of his chilled flesh beneath my hands. The way his eyes closed in sensuous pleasure at the warmth of my flesh against him. Of the tears in his eyes and the way he clung to me afterward. That was the night I learned all about Them. The aliens that were infiltrating our world. Black, oily monstrosities and shapeshifters to whom we are nothing more than fodder for their private little war.

“How long, Alex? Help me to remember what’s real,” I beg him. I hate this feeling, this fucking terrifying feeling of being lost in a nightmare that I’ll never wake up from because even waking doesn’t make the nightmare go away.

Because the nightmare is reality. There’s something in me fighting against it, trying to pull me back into the safe little fantasy I’ve been living in for so long and I’m afraid I’m not strong enough to hold on.

Alex bites his lip. “I’m not supposed to do that. You have to remember by yourself. If I remind you, you’ll be able to access the memories but they won’t be properly connected, so you could lose them.”

“To hell with that!” I bark. “We don’t have time to fuck around.” I shove my way past him out of the bathroom and head for the front door.

Alex glides in my wake. “What’s the rush? Not that I’m complaining, mind you, this place isn’t safe any more…”

I hear his unspoken addendum; _not since I brought you here…_

“Today is…” I stop suddenly, and he almost bumps into me. I feel a pang of disappointment, realizing that I wanted to feel him, feel his body against mine. “…today is…” There’s something important that’s supposed to happen today. I reach for the date, trying to work backward or forward from the fragments of memory that keep slipping about in my mind, like the loose bits inside a broken device. “…last day. It’s my last day at work. The retirement party.”

Alex looks at me as if I’ve lost my mind. “Who cares? Fuck ‘em. If you want cake and ice cream I’ll take you to Baskin Robbins on the way back to the lab. It’s not like they wanted you there for anything but the chance to gloat. Bastards are probably all replicants, anyway,” he adds gloomily.

I stare at him in consternation. “You’re not serious.”

He considers my words for a moment. “No. I’m not. But we know it’s got to be more than the Director and Kersh who’ve been replaced by now.”

“There’s got to be something we can do.” I grope for any memories from earlier times with Scully…yes…I remember…she’s got a crack team of squints working for her in Quantico…no…our lab. Someplace in the mid-west. Focusing on the aliens, of course. “Isn’t there some kind of test, to find out who the replicants are?”

“We’ve got a chemical test that detects even the latest models, but we need at least an ounce of blood. Scully’s boys are working on something better.”

“What about the CDC? Couldn’t we manufacture some kind of disease outbreak that would require blood tests?”

“They’re probably infiltrated. Besides, too obvious. Once they figure out what we’re doing they’ll know their cover is blown and that we have a test and who knows what they’ll do then? No, I think we’ll just have to sit tight and…”

His cell phone rings. Alex pulls it out of his shirt pocket and answers. “Yeah…what’s up?” His eyes focus on me. “Yeah. I found him. He’s okay.” He listens for a moment, and then frowns. “No. We’re off. He’s not going back.” His eyes flicker to me again for a moment, a little guiltily. “Forget it, Mulder. No way.” He turns and goes into the bathroom, shutting the door firmly behind him.

Once, I was the sort of man who wouldn’t lower himself to listening at keyholes, or at that little gap beneath the door. I’m not the man I was.

“..a handheld? Halle-fucking-luiah! I want one in-hand by tomorrow morning…”

The toilet flushes, drowning out Krycek’s voice for a moment. I press my ear against the crack between door and frame.

“…still untested, Mulder…well, how sure is she? Did she really give you those numbers, Mulder, or did you just pull them out of your lying ass?” Then, “…don’t get cute with me, fuckhead, I’m not in the mood…”

He turns on the faucet and I’m straining to hear over the sound of water splashing into the sink.

“…not going to risk him, Mulder. You bastard…that’s dirty pool even for you…no, I’m going to hang up…Dana, goddamn it, why do you let him pull this shit? We already talked about it. It’s too risky. Someone else can do it, someone we can afford to lose. We need him…”

I don’t hear anything else for a while, just an indistinct murmuring, and then the water shuts off. Quickly, I get up and put some distance between me and the door, just as it opens.

Alex steps out. If he suspects that I was listening he doesn’t draw attention to it. He tucks the phone back into his pocket and crosses the floor to seat himself on the edge of the bed with his back to me, shoulders slumped.

“Bad news?” I ask.

For a moment, he doesn’t answer. Then, “We’re leaving in fifteen minutes. Get whatever business done that you need to do. Anything in the bathroom is up for grabs. Though if you take my toothbrush,” he adds, with a half hearted glare, “I won’t want it back. Pack up anything you want, we won’t be coming back.”

“Where are we going?”

“A safe house,” he tells me curtly. “It’ll be a little crowded for a while but what the hell…better than being on the run…”

“That’s not what Mulder wants us to do,” I guess, and he gives me a startled, half wild look. “Don’t try to run my life for me Alex,” I tell him sternly. “You may be my…” just in time I keep from bringing up subjects that I don’t think we need getting in the way here “…my contact with Mulder…” I continue “…but that can change.”

“Mulder is an asshole,” he grumbles. “He has no regard at all for his own personal safety, which is all very well and fine for him, but he has no right to expect it of everyone else.” He stares at the floor, worry lines etching his face.

I go to stand next to him. His dark hair is tousled, and I barely check myself from reaching out to comb it back into place with my fingers. I wish I could remember if I’ve ever done that for him before. “This is war, Alex. We’re all expendable. What did Scully tell you?” I can’t bring myself to call her Dana, even after…after everything we’ve been through.

“They had a couple of breakthroughs last night. Carpenter’s got a replicant detector that works from a distance, which is good news, but the real screamer is that they’ve figured out a way to get the magnetite compound shielded with nanos. They tested it with the lab’s latest pet replicant. Laced his food with the shit and he didn’t even notice until the timer expired and then…pfft.”

“So this is something we can use to kill replicants with?” I’m trying to see why they think this is such a major leap. Replicants can be killed in a number of ways, all involving magnetite. They’re not that hard to kill once you know their secrets.

“The problem isn’t killing them. It’s getting them all at once.”

“So…it’s the timer that’s important?”

“Yeah.” He looks up at me, his face expressionless. “Mulder wants you to use your ‘last day’ as an excuse to tour the Hoover shedding magnetite loaded nanos. Everyone you touch, every source of food or water you wave your hand over. We couldn’t plan something major like this before, because once the first one gets sick from the magnetite they’d figure it out. What one of them knows they all know. But we’ve got the nanos bonding together to shield and bind the magnetite until the preprogrammed time. Then all of them get exposed at the same time.”

“Why does it matter whether they know what we’re doing or not? We can just set up bombs and ambushes. Use guerilla tactics. Especially since the weapons that we’ll be using, the magnetite, won’t cause civilian casualties.”

Krycek shook his head. “Once they know we have this capability, and that we’re willing to use it openly, it’ll be war. We’ve been hiding the nano research from them, and they think that everyone who knew about them and their magnetite weakness died when they killed the rest of the old guard last year. And they could do a lot of damage from the places of authority they’ve insinuated themselves into. By the time we sort out who is who it’ll be too late. We have to take them out of all key areas at once.”

“That’s…” the scope of the operation he’s describing overwhelms me “…we can’t do it, then. There’s no way…”

“We have top figures in the CIA, the White House, HomeSec, NSA, CDC…the FBI was…” His fingers dig into the bedspread. “The Consortium had the FBI so riddled with their people it made the aliens concentrate their attentions there. They didn’t care if they were obvious about it…they knew the Consortium already knew. Mulder tried to tell them that we needed to make our move before it was too late, but those stupid bastards in the Big House waited too long. You’re the only one left.”

I thought I had hit rock bottom, waking up stark naked in a strange bed after downing a shitload of pills the night before, but this…

…they didn’t even consider me enough of a threat to bother eliminating me. Just shove me out like last year’s trash. I’m not sure how I should be feeling about that. Grateful? Useless? I turn what Alex has said over in my mind for a few moments, and then add in the overheard bathroom conversation. “So…Mulder wants to do it now. At my retirement party.”

He hesitates for a few moments, then says “Yeah. That’s his plan.”

I take a deep breath. I don’t want to have to think about this for too long. “Tell him to do it. Tell him to go forward with the plan.” He doesn’t move, and I demand “Call Mulder, Alex.”

“I don’t need to,” Krycek admits. “He started sending out the orders the minute he hung up the phone. Five hours from now all hell breaks loose.”

Incredulously, I stare at him. “And you were just going to take me to a safe house? What the fucking hell were you thinking!?”

His jaw clenches sullenly. “I told Mulder before, that we ought to just blow up the whole damned Hoover. I think they’ve made it their base of operations. They may not all die instantly.” He raises his head and stares at me, resentment burning in his reddened eyes. “Your chances of coming out of this alive are next to nothing. And we won’t be able to send anyone in with you for backup. We have every available operative assigned already, and we’re short-handed as it is. Those pricks on the hill declined to volunteer more than a handful of their people.”

My stomach knots. I want to ask ‘why do you care?’ but I know he’d tell me. His expression is raw, almost painfully easy to read.

I want to ask ‘are we lovers, Alex?’ but I’m afraid I know what his answer would be, and I don’t want it brought out. Especially right now, when I know that what I have to do is going to rip his heart out.

I want to sit on the bed beside him, and pull him down into my arms, but instead I ask “Where are the nanos, Alex? Show me what to do.”

He says softly, bitterly “Mulder knew you’d say that. And he knew I wouldn’t be able to keep from telling you the truth. He knows how to use us both. He’s running the show, now. Those stupid bastards on the hill just think they’re in charge.” His head falls forward. “The world is full of sheep and idiots, who don’t deserve what we’re sacrificing to keep them safe. What we’ve sacrificed.”

“Them and all their unborn children, Alex,” I remind him. “The future is worth saving.”

“Maybe.” He stands up. “C’mon. The canisters are on their way. We’ve just got time to get you back to your place so you can dress for your going away party.”

Alex drops me off two blocks from the Hoover, not wanting to take the chance of us being seen together. I walk along the street and watch as the buildings on either side of me peel back slowly to reveal the Hoover building, window by window, flag by flag.

Once, this sight would have stirred pride in my heart. I remember, as a young agent, standing on the sidewalk across the street from the Hoover, listening to the determined flap of the flags as the wind whipped them into motion, feeling the lump in my throat as I vowed to be worthy of this proud tradition, this great service.

Have I kept my vow?

The flags hang down, limp and silent as I cross the street. _This is the last time_ I realize as I push my way into the revolving door. The last time I’ll be walking in here, secure in my belonging.

Doubled visions catch me by surprise, and I stumble against a marble pillar.

It’s over, I’ve been discarded

…I’m here to take it back for humanity…

…Everything is normal, life goes on without me…

…I’m surrounded by enemies, hidden monsters behind the masks of familiar faces…

…Krycek is dead, a traitor to his people, shot by my own hand…

…Alex is alive and waiting for me, hoping against hope that I’ll return to him…

…the world is exactly as everyone believes it to be…

…everything is changed, alien…

My breath comes in small gasps as I struggle to remember which are the real memories and which are the false ones. The vials of nanocytes beneath my armpits are a welcome discomfort, grounding me, reminding me of what I have to do.

“Assistant Director? Are you all right?” a woman asks me. She has auburn hair, not so bright as Scully’s, but her eyes are just as blue. Barbara something or other. One of last year’s graduates.

I straighten, and give what I hope is a reassuring smile. “I’m fine, Barbara. Just a little dizzy. Low blood sugar.”

“Can I get you something, sir?” she asks eagerly. “A bagel with cream cheese?”

“Thank you.” I sit down on a nearby bench and surreptitiously reach under my jacket to dislodge the cap from the canister under my left armpit. May as well start here and now. I’ve got a dozen replacement canisters in my briefcase, so there’s no reason to be stingy. Almost everyone passes through the lobby on their way in or out.

The nanocytes are programmed to spread out and seek living hosts. Precisely four and a half hours from now, at one thirty, they will transport their magnetite compounds to the spinal columns of their current hosts and bond the metal to the spinal nerve. At that time, every replicant which has been infested by the nanocytes will be killed or incapacitated.

The young agent returns and thrusts a bagel slathered with cream cheese at me; I take it from her, making certain to brush my hand against hers. For practice, mostly; I doubt very much that she’s a replicant. “Thank you.” I bite into the bagel and try to look like I’m enjoying it.

She takes a small step back, looking a little wary. Probably thinks I was coming on to her or something. “I…uh…have to get back to work, sir…”

I wave her off.

After she’s gone I drop the bagel in the garbage can by the door, along with a canister with a timed release. I know they won’t empty the cans until later in the day. After a quick stop in both the downstairs bathrooms, I head for the Hoover cafeteria. I have a number of acquaintances who work there, and I ought to be able to catch them just about the time they start preparing the day’s lunch selections.

Three hours ought to be enough. The more area I cover, the better chance I have of getting them all. I have no idea how many they bothered to replicate, but I’m guessing there are a few in every major department, and the higher up in the organization the more likely an agent would be considered worth the trouble of replication.

After I finish in the cafeteria, I ride one elevator up and another down, over and over, until I have had the chance to surreptitiously attach a small, timed-release dispenser under each of the hand rails. The nanocytes will be spreading out inside the elevators for the next several hours, attaching themselves to anyone who stands on the floor or brushes against the wall.

When I’m finished with the elevators and all of the staircases, it’s time to say goodbye to more of my old friends. I don’t see the smoker, but he’s probably around somewhere. Gloating. God, wouldn’t that be just perfect if the smoker turned out to be a replicant?

The retirement party is about what I expected. They have one of those white sheet cakes with an appropriate message scrawled across it in bright blue frosting. Sagging blue roses droop listlessly all around the perimeter. I surprise everyone by insisting on cutting the cake; making a quick mental calculation I manage to cut the pieces small enough that everyone gets one. Every now and then I imagine I can see a faint flutter as the nanocytes spread themselves about.

The Director makes a speech. Same one he makes every time; you’d think the bastard would at least try to change something. I suppose replicants don’t have that much imagination, though.

Halfway through, he gets a funny look on his face. His eyelids start to twitch. His secretary, the one who brought the cake, doubles over and starts coughing.

Deputy Director Kersh stands up with a look of alarm on his face. “What’s going on?” he demands, then he crumples to the ground with a satisfyingly agonized look on his face. So many years of taking his shit…payback shouldn’t be so sweet, but it is. I don’t think I’m a nice man any more.

One my one they fall to the ground, until I’m the only one still standing.

That’s when the panic starts.

There shouldn’t be so many of them, should there? Could something have gone wrong?

I hurry out of the break room.

Two men have collapsed at the foot of the water cooler. Both of them look vaguely familiar. One man’s arm is thrown across the other’s back, as if he is attempting to shield his friend. I don’t recognize either of them.

A woman in a deep purple business suit crouches behind her desk, whimpering. She stares in horror at the man who must be her partner, flopped like a rag doll across his desk.

There’s a man with a cell phone. He isn’t talking on it, just holding it as if it was some kind of poisonous animal. There’s a male voice cursing from somewhere out of sight.

A door slams. Then everything is quiet, except for the whimpering sound from the woman in the purple business suit.

I walk past her, wondering what I’m supposed to do. Should I call 911? Or just leave?

What would Alex want me to do? I try to call his cell but he doesn’t pick up. When I snap the phone shut I notice that my hand is shaking.

There’s a woman lying on the elevator floor, her limbs akimbo, her skirt riding up to the tops of her thighs. SAC Sandra Mackie. She’s one of the people being considered for my position. The door opens and shuts rhythmically on her outstretched arm.

I drag her out of the elevator and straighten her limbs and clothing, trying to give her back her dignity before rigor mortis takes even that option away.

My mind is shutting down. All I can think is _she should have worn pants_. The words play over and over in my brain, like one of those old eight millimeter tapes when it reaches the end of the reel and just spins, flapping, over and over…

…she should have worn a pants suit today…

Standing here, I’ve missed the elevator. So I slam the heel of my hand down on the button, repeatedly. Somewhere in the maze of offices to my left I hear someone sobbing hysterically. I know I should feel guilty about not going to her, not helping the survivors, but I’ve lost the ability to do anything other than continue on the path I’ve chosen.

I did this. I did this.

They’ll be all right. The people, I mean. The nanocytes won’t hurt real people. They couldn’t. Scully’s techies couldn’t have screwed up that badly. The nanos can’t be malfunctioning, killing everyone they infect.

No. Or else I’d be dead like everyone else. I cling to that thought.

The elevator opens for me. There’s another body in it. I almost decide to wait, and then I realize how ridiculous that is. The body isn’t going to be gone when the elevator opens next time.

I’m on the ground floor, just past the reception area when I see her. Crumpled on the ground, red hair framing her heart shaped face, a brightly wrapped package lying on the ground next to her limp hand.

I sink to my knees beside her…

…she can’t be here, she’s in a lab in South Dakota…

…she left a message with Kim saying that she’d be in the area visiting an old friend and she’d try to make it to my retirement party…

This isn’t Dana Scully. It has to be a replicant. The nanocytes only kill replicants.

They’re all dead. All dead. I’m a walking plague. Krycek must have slipped me something to make me immune.

They’re not all dead. Doesn’t that prove something?

I’m a murderer. How can I have done that…let them brainwash me like that? They must have implanted the false memories in me at one of their labs and left Krycek to finish the deed.

I dial his number again. Alex…pick up…please.

This time there’s a click. I hear someone breathing on the phone. “Alex? It’s Walter.”

The connection breaks.

I don’t know how long I stand there, staring at the body of Dana Scully. I should call Mulder, I think. Or maybe the police.

The door bangs open, and, predictably, Mulder charges in. He sees Scully’s body and he throws himself to the floor beside her. “Walter? What happened? Did you call 9-1-1 yet!?”

“Mulder?” It can’t be Mulder. He’s at headquarters. “What are you doing here? Did Alex send you?”

“Alex? Alex Krycek? I knew that rat-bastard couldn’t be dead! Did he do this to her? What the fuck…?” Mulder frantically brushes at his arms, rising to stagger back away from me, toward the door. “Walter? What’s happening? Don’t touch her body…there’s something on it.” His gaze sweeps the lobby, seeing the other bodies, and then returns to me, horror dawning in his hazel eyes. “It’s not affecting you. Why, Walter?” He staggers to the door and drags it open. His muscles are spasming like a malfunctioning toy but he manages to wedge the heavy door open and shove his body through.

I wonder if I should try to stop him. I wonder if I should put the muzzle of my gun in my mouth and pull the trigger.

I consider my options.

I’m in my car, driving. I don’t remember starting the engine. It doesn’t feel like I’ve lost any time. It’s more like I was sleepwalking. I pull over, and take my gun out of its holster.

There is no safety for me in either reality, and no hope. Everyone in the Hoover is dead. Human or replicants, they’re gone now.

I wonder if the police have arrived, yet. I imagine them swarming through the halls, opening doors and checking rooms. No…they’d call the CDC.

Eventually, they’ll find everyone’s body but mine.

Assistant Director Skinner’s body is unaccounted for, they’ll say. We need to bring him in for questioning.

Even if nobody is left alive to remember that I was there, they’ll find the canisters, with my fingerprints all over them.

What will I tell them? My dead lover sent me in to kill them because they were aliens.

That smoking bastard must be laughing his ass off right now. I should have guessed that something was wrong when he didn’t show up to gloat.

Why am I still alive?

That’s the question that someone in my head keeps asking, over and over.

Then another explanation occurs to me. What if I’m the replicant? Would I know? What if they replaced the real Skinner with a replicant and it was Alex Krycek’s job to arm it and send it in to kill?

That would explain the chaotic tangle of memories that thrash about and collide in my head. None of them are real. They’re just programs. I was a rush job. And the real Walter Skinner must be dead or imprisoned.

What if all of us have been replaced and we don’t know it? How can we know if we’re ourselves?

There’s only one man who can give me the answers to those questions. I slip my Sig back into its holster and restart the car.

I’m disappointed that the door to Krycek’s apartment is unlocked. I would have liked to kick it in, or at the very least shoot the lock all to hell.

I open the door and walk in. Two suitcases are standing by the door. A third one lies open in the living room. Krycek stands up quickly, dropping the papers which he had been reading.

“Going somewhere, Alex?”

He looks at me with cold, calculating eyes. The last spark of hope is extinguished. This man is not my lover. He never was.

“Aren’t you going to ask me how it went?”

Then he blinks, and his face changes. He smiles warmly at me. “Sure, Walter. Sit down. Tell me what happened.”

I step inside, and as he moves past me to shut the door, I draw my Sig. “I just have one question for you, Krycek. Am I a replicant?”

“No, of course not,” he looks puzzled. “What makes you think you are?”

“Who are you working for, Krycek?”

He licks his lips. “What are you talking about, Skinner? You know who I work for.”

I point the gun at his head. “Pick up the phone. Call Mulder. I want to hear his voice.”

“You…you know I can’t do that. Calls are too easily traced.”

“Call him. Prove that you can. I think you faked that call from him earlier. Prove me wrong, Krycek.”

Desperation slithers through his eyes, then is replaced by a look of cunning. “You just want me to call them. You’re probably an alien.”

“You just said I wasn’t.”

“I changed my mind. Prove that you’re you and I’ll call Mulder.”

I don’t need my bureau training to know he’s lying. He doesn’t know where Mulder is. There is no Resistance. There are no aliens. Just a chain smoking, murderous son-of-a-bitch who has finally gotten what he wanted. Krycek probably will get a promotion for this.

“You put a lot of work into me, Krycek. It was a mind-fuck to beat all mind-fucks. I hope it was worth it.”

“Walter…look…I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re making a mistake. Please. Put the gun down. Whatever it was that you think I did, give me a chance to explain…”

Now I know how Mulder felt. To want so badly to believe. Knowing that they’ll use that to fuck you over and over…

“Walter…”

They’re so real…the memories of him. The feel of his hands on my body, the smell of his musky sweat and the taste of vodka and cinnamon on his lips. The way his hair stands straight up in the morning. The play of his muscles as he holds me, thrusting into me, the fuck-drunk look in his eyes afterward.

I am suspended between two realities; one where Krycek is my lover, and other where he is dead. I don’t know which one is worse, but there’s only one choice I can make.

There’s a look of astonishment in his eyes as the bullet knocks him backward. His head slams against the floor with a thud that drives itself through my bones. He lies face up, blood trickling down his forehead. His hand strains, as if he’s trying to reach out for me, then his muscles go limp.

I close my eyes, but it doesn’t change anything. The sight of his dead face is burned into my memory; I’ve seen it over and over in my nightmares.

The phone rings.

I wait for the memories of him to die, like a flame whose fuel has been consumed. Or perhaps for them to rise up like a vengeful ghost and overwhelm me.

He trims his nails every night, because he hates the feel of them on a keyboard. There’s a tiny bald spot on the side of his head, where the hair didn’t quite grow back after a playground accident when he was eight.

The phone rings.

I pick up the receiver.

There’s a whoop on the other end of the line “Alex! We did it! One hundred percent success. Has Walter called yet?”

It takes me a moment to identify the voice. My brain seems suspended in something thick and heavy. “Mulder.”

“Walter? Thank god you’re all right. We’ve got cleanup working the Hoover now…son of a bitch, there were a lot of them.”

“Almost all of them.” My voice is calm but my heart is hammering. “I thought something had gone wrong.”

“No. Everyone we’ve tested so far has been a replicant. Looks like we had a ninety five plus replacement rate in the Hoover. Sorry. I had no idea, Walter, or I wouldn’t have sent you in. Alex must be royally pissed, huh? He’ll be wanting my nards on a stick,” Mulder chuckled.

It’s like all the air has been sucked out of my lungs. I can’t breathe.

“Walter?” Mulder’s voice turns serious. “Is everything all right?”

_No. No, Mulder. It’s not._

 _What was Alex Krycek to me?_ It’s a question I don’t want the answer to any more.

“Walter…sir…talk to me.” Mulder’s getting worried. I heard him talking to someone in the background. “Walter, where is Alex? Put him on the phone.”

I don’t want to tell him. I can’t face him…I can’t. I press the barrel of my gun against my temple.

_Pull the trigger. Finish it_.

I drop the handset back on its cradle. It’s not that I’m afraid to die. It’s not even that I don’t want to. But I’ve always believed that people who kill themselves are the most selfish sons of bitches in the world.

I’ve never understood what would drive a man to kill himself. Until now. That doesn’t change the basic wrongness of the act. Mulder would blame himself for both our deaths. Mine and Alex’s.

Unless…it wasn’t really Mulder on the phone. Maybe They were listening in. They know what I’ve done. They want me to kill myself.

I put my gun away and pull the phone cord out of the wall. A pointless gesture, but is there anything I could do right now that wasn’t pointless?

There’s a smell of fresh coffee coming from the kitchen. Alex must have just made it. I close my eyes and imagine him taking the coffee pot out, filling the filter with Kona Blend.

His favorite brand. He has it shipped from the Big Island. One day, I was going to take him to the black sand beach late at night and make love to him, with the waves beating against our chests.

As I step into the kitchen something crunches beneath my feet. A broken coffee mug. Shattered on the floor.

Shattered. The word repeats over and over in my head. I turn off the coffeemaker and dump the coffee into the sink. Then I pick up the larger shards of broken mug, rinse each piece carefully, and set them out to dry.

I sit down at the table and try to fit the pieces back together. The “A” and the “L” fit perfectly. The “E” is badly chipped and one of the legs of the “X” is missing.

I remember buying the mug at a gift shop in LAX, as I was about to fly home. I had just discovered his current address. He didn’t know I knew. I had the mug wrapped up and Fed-Exed from California. Wondering what he would think when he got it in the mail. If he would realize who had sent it.

Is that a real memory, or a fake one? Is there a difference?

I stand up. My legs are unsteady as I walk back into the living room. His body is sprawled on its back, framed by a box of CDs and computer equipment. On a desk I find two plane tickets for Hawaii Airlines. Dated for next month.

Two tickets.

The blood from his forehead has pooled on the floor. There’s an expression of surprise on his face, or perhaps of betrayal. Is this the second time I’ve killed him, or the first?

I want to know what it feels like, to hold Alex Krycek in my arms. I remember that he likes to be touched. Stroked. I brush my hand through his hair; it comes away sticky with blood.

Both of us knew that last night might be our last time together. Why hadn’t we said goodbye?

I slide to the floor. Alex’s blood soaks into my slacks. There’s a lot more this time…more than I remember in my other memories. I pull his head up onto my lap and smooth his hair back. His prosthetic arm scrapes across the floor.

Sometimes he writes things on the mirror. He waits for the steam to dry before he comes out of the bathroom. He thinks I don’t notice.

The blood has stopped flowing. The wound isn’t miraculously healing. The skin of his forehead is slightly cool beneath my fingers.

I run my fingers through his hair, looking for the bald spot that I remember finding so many times.

It’s not there. I’m not sure what that means. Is the man who I’m holding in my arms the lie, or is it my memories of him? I’m too worn out to guess. It doesn’t matter any more…it really doesn’t.

Someone kicks the door open.

It just doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if the memories are lies. I won’t give them up. I cradle Alex’s head against me and close my eyes. Whoever it is, let them think what they’d like. Let them shoot me, or pity me.

“Oh, hell. Son of a bitch. Walter…”

The two halves of my reality collide and spin out of control. Krycek is dead.

Alex’s voice says “I’m so sorry…Walter…oh fuck…Walter…look at me.”

He pries my fingers loose and pulls them up, holding them against his face. His cheeks are prickly with a day’s growth of beard. “It wasn’t me, Walter. It was a replicant. I’m so fucking sorry. You didn’t shoot me, Walter.” He rolls the dead Alex off my lap. “Talk to me?” he pleads. “I’m going to kill him. I’m going to kill Mulder.”

“Everyone is dead.” I pull my hands away from him; I slide one of them into my pocket, feeling for my Sig.

“I know. I called Mulder when I got away…he told me about the Hoover. I’m so fucking sorry, Walter. If I’d had any idea…”

My hand tightens on the grip of my gun. I know what he wants. He wants me to be distracted by the implication that he was captured by the enemy. That he just “got away”. But he’s just another replicant. They won’t fool me again. I focus my eyes on him, examining him.

Krycek’s hair is damp, plastered against his scalp and his shirt is soaked all the way down to his jeans, down to mid-thigh. He catches me looking at his crotch and grins. “That’s my Walter. Let’s get you out of those bloody clothes.”

I whip the Sig up, but he must have been expecting something. Or maybe he’s just got good reflexes. He slaps my hand and the gun goes spinning away. I lunge for it, but he snatches it up before I’m even close.

He must be an alien. Nobody is that fast.

Something of what I’m thinking must have shown in my face, because he says, gently “You’re not at your best right now, Walter. Four days out of seven you can kick my ass…but not today.”

After removing the magazine, he tosses the gun into the kitchen. It slides beneath the refrigerator in a sluice of coffee and ceramic chips. “Oops,” he says. “Sorry. That’s going to be a bitch to fish out. Not to mention the grossness factor.”

“You’re wearing a collar.”

“Yeah. They didn’t have time to get it off me.” Then something flashes in his eyes, too quickly for me to identify. “Is this the first time you’ve seen it?” he asks, casually.

“You put me in one earlier today. I don’t remember why.” Everything is all mixed up in my head.

He spent the night alone, handcuffed to my furniture. In the morning, I put him back outside and left without a backward glance.

_…I brought him inside and fed him hot chocolate. He told me about Them. I didn’t believe. Not right away._

_He infected me with nanocytes and used them to control me, to hurt me. He enjoyed using them._

_…He brought over a bottle of whiskey the night Mulder was taken. He held me in his arms while I wept._

It’s hard to keep track of which one of them did what. “How many of you are there?”

He sags, and for a moment I see the deep lines that furrow his once youthful face. His hair is threaded with gray. “There’s only one of me, Walter.”

I look pointedly at his corpse. “The other one was a better liar.”

“That’s a replicant, Walter. An alien replacement. I’m the real deal.”

“Sure. That’s what they all say,” I tell him bitterly. I wonder what he wants from me. By now I’ll probably be a major suspect in a mass murder case that will dominate the front pages for days. Or I’m an unsung hero who took down a whole building full of aliens.

“Tell me what I can do to prove it to you, Walt.”

I consider the possibilities. If I want to catch Them out, it has to be something unexpected, something They couldn’t have planned for. Something he can’t control. “I want to talk to Scully.” If the Scully I saw was a replicant, they may not have another. I’m sure I’d recognize her voice.

He stares at me for a long moment. “Okay. I can do that. I have to check something first, though.” He steps back out of reach, takes out a ring and slips it onto his finger. The ring has a large glassy, grayish cab set into a too-bright silvery frame. It looks like one of those mood rings that were so popular in the eighties. He fiddles with the base, keeping a wary eye on me. I notice that he’s keeping his other hand hidden.

I’m so tired of the deceptions. The lies. Hiding, and being hidden from. “Let’s see the gun, Alex. I want everything out in the open. No more secrets.”

He brushes his jacket aside. The Glock is pointed at my chest. “If this thing changes color, I’m going to have to kill you.”

I think about that for a moment. “I’m okay with that.”

His eyes search my face. “Ah, Walter,” he says sadly. “You’re so fucked up.”

We wait, in silence. After a while, my lower back starts to ache. “I’m going to sit down,” I tell him.

“Okay.” He sighs. “Want some coffee?”

“How much longer is this going to take?”

“We’re done. You’re clean.”

“Oh. How sure are you?”

“Sure enough.” He holsters his gun and goes into the kitchen. “Hey,” he complains. “That fucking replicant dumped out my Kona.”

While he’s gone I spend some time rummaging through his luggage. Clothes. Books. A box of pictures. I recognize some of the people in them, or, at least, I have memories with their faces in them.

Charlie Bey. Big guy with a smile like an alligator. He got shot by guards at one of the facilities we took down. Lydia Meyers. Looked like somebody’s secretary but she could put a magnetite bullet through a replicant’s eye at a hundred paces. Colin Glaugh. Explosives and security. There’s one of me and Mulder. Mulder’s giving me rabbit ears. I wonder who was taking the picture.

There’s one of Dana Scully and another woman…her sister, Melissa? I remember that she’s dead. Killed by a Consortium hitman named Cardinale. I also remember that Mulder gave her away when she married Mick St. John, one of the men we rescued out of the aliens’ green goo vats. She has three little girls.

Under a false bottom in a box I find pictures of…me. The pictures are a bit grainy; they look like surveillance photos. Some of them are harmless; me brushing my teeth, sorting socks, cooking dinner, sleeping. The others…I’m a single man who lives alone. What do you expect?

Krycek comes out of the kitchen carrying a cup; when he sees what I’m holding he freezes and his face loses all expression.

“You’re packing up,” I remark, unnecessarily. “Moving on?”

“This place isn’t safe any more. They know where we are. Here…” he hands me the cup and takes the pictures carefully out of my hand. “We’re leaving.”

“We?”

“We,” he says firmly. He rearranges the order of the photos, tucks them back into the box and replaces the false bottom, but not before I’ve gotten a good look at the one on top. It’s me, kneeling naked on the floor of my bathroom. My face burns as he tucks the box away.

“You’ve been watching me,” I remark.

“Every hour of every day. Unless I’m off killing somebody or planting bombs or breaking into top security facilities, and then I just leave the cameras rolling. It gives me something to look forward to at the end of the day. Keeps my spirits up as I’m shlogging through sewers or being showered with green goo or playing hide-the-plam with an alien hunter.

“How long have you been doing this?”

“Since Mulder decided it was time to quit the bureau. Where any normal person would have just turned in their resignation, Mulder just couldn’t do anything so normal. He had to be abducted. We figured that would be the exit-stage-right most likely to confuse everyone who would be looking for him. The aliens would be suspecting each other of swiping the prize, the Consortium would figure one of the factions decided to snatch him.

“So…my memory of Mulder’s abduction wasn’t a false one?”

“No…it actually played out the way you remember. We have allies among the grays; they’re no more a homogenous society than we are. Mulder talked them into staging it, mostly because he always wanted to be abducted. If you ask me. He tells it differently. Here…take these.” He hands me two suitcases, then picks up the third himself..

“You still haven’t let me talk to Dana,” I remind him.

“I’ll do better than that. She’s going to want to check you over to make sure you didn’t take any harm from the nanocytes. Some of our other operatives had problems.

My limbs feel heavy and sluggish. I let the suitcases fall to the floor. “Sure, Krycek. They were there, you know. Mulder and Scully. Scully died in the lobby. Mulder was late. You know how he is.” My voice sounds distant. Emotionless. “When he touched Scully, he started to convulse. He made it out the door, but I guess he didn’t get too far. I don’t remember.”

“Son of a… Fuck!” Krycek snarls. “Walter…listen to me. Don’t fall apart. Not now. Please. Just trust me for a little while longer,” he pleads. “What you saw…they weren’t the real Mulder and Scully. They were replicants.”

“The whole world, Krycek? Are they all replicants?”

“It just seems that way right now. Come on, Walter. If you can’t carry these for me we’re going to have to make three trips. I’m not leaving you alone like this and I’m not giving up my gun. Walter…help me out,” Krycek coaxes.

Krycek’s car is parked on the street. A light colored Honda sedan. I pile my suitcases into the trunk; Krycek slides his into the back seat.

We drive out of town. Highway after highway. Mile after mile.

“Where are we going?” I ask, finally, more out of a need to break the silence than because I’m curious.

“Minnesota. There’s a place up there, south of Duluth…the Vermillion area. I’ve had it built to my specs. You’ll like it. There’s a lake stocked with trout, and a private dock. You can get in a canoe and paddle for miles, from lake to lake. Good sailing, too. I hope you like onion soup.”

Something stirs inside me, a faint feeling of anticipation. “You like sailing?”

“I’m willing to learn.”

“I used to sail when I was younger. On Lake Huron.”

“I know. There’s a fourteen footer in dry dock, whenever you feel up to it.”

Rain pounds on the windshield, then the rain changes to slushy hail. Krycek turns on the heater.

“As I recall, it gets pretty cold in the winter. I’m not fond of ice fishing. Had a neighbor who died that way.”

“Snow gets deep,” Krycek remarks with satisfaction. “We won’t be getting many visitors once winter sets in. Sometimes the phone lines go down. Cell reception isn’t so great either.”

“Why onion soup?” I ask finally.

“Mosquitos. Apparently they don’t like onions.”

“Oh. My mother used to grow a lot of onions. She used them in everything.”

“First night I spent there, the bloodsucking bastards nearly sucked me dry. You couldn’t get away from them. Mike…the guy who built your boat…was hardly getting bit at all. I asked him what he used and he told me about the onions. And the garlic.”

“What’s her name?”

“Huh?” Krycek gives me a look like I’ve lost my mind. “Who?”

“Your boat.”

“Oh. That’s for you to say. The boat’s yours. Mike’s waiting on the final paint job until you decide what colors you want.”

“Mike’s a neighbor?”

“Fifteen minutes by motorboat. You’ll like him. He doesn’t talk much, but he’s a hell of a carpenter.”

It all sounds so perfect. If someone had drugged me and induced me to spill my guts about my childhood, and what I dream about doing once I retire…

There’s no reason anyone would bother going to this kind of trouble just to fuck with my mind. I’m not worth it. I have no value. Not any more.

He never called Dana Scully.

I never reminded him. Every time I think I should insist on it, something goes cold inside me. I feel paralyzed.

Maybe the man I’m riding with is a replicant. A being created to mimic Alex Krycek perfectly. Someone created to play the role of my lover. He’s driving me to a place constructed to mimic a place that I’ve longed for all my life. They want to pacify me by giving me everything I’ve always wanted.

That doesn’t make any sense. Who would give a shit? And yet, I can’t get it out of my head.

The man I used to be twenty years ago would be making plans to discover what’s going on. He would be planning to drug Krycek and search the house. To secretly purchase electronic devices to tap the phone and computer. He would be coming up with clever questions to trick Krycek into revealing his true nature.

What am I doing? Watching the highway signs pass overhead. Watching the trees with their multicolored leaves, the gentle dip and sway of the grassy landscape passing by. Dreaming about white sails filled with wind, about the rhythmic slap of the waves against the hull, the light reflecting off the water.

…don’t throw me in the briar patch, please…

If this is all real, and the world is full of alien replicants…

…I’d have to assume that they’ve taken Mulder and Scully, since they haven’t tried to contact me directly to warn me about the threat. Or have they? Would I remember? I can barely remember who I am, let alone what I have done, or what anyone has told me.

Do replicants know what they are?

Whatever he is, the man who I’ve become I looking forward to retirement. Even if Krycek is lying to me, and what I’ll find at the end of this journey is a slug to the brain and a hastily dug grave.

Like Krycek said…I’m fucked up.

I come awake, suddenly. Frankenstein-like faces with eyes and mouths sewn shut melt away.

Krycek is poking my arm. “Walt…you awake?”

“I am now.” I sit up and look around. There’s no cabin, and this doesn’t look anything like a Minnesota lakeside.

We’re in a parking garage. My heart starts to hammer. _Not again_.

_…I hoped you would win, Mulder…_

_…the report of a gun, echoing off the concrete walls…_

_…blood trickled down his face…_

_…I’m walking away from him without a backward glance._ In my dreams, I always walk away and leave him there, even when I don’t want to, even when part of me is screaming and pleading with myself to turn around, to check for a pulse, to pull him into my arms, to hold him one last time…

“Walter…it’s going to be okay. I couldn’t tell you where we were going, just in case you got scanned. They took my other blocking collar. This place is shielded.”

“Where are we?”

“A high priced public parking garage. Pay by the month with assigned spots. Come on.”

He pops open the door and slides out.

Why are they doing this to me? I wonder what Krycek would do if I refused to get out of the car. Pull a gun? Call security to drag me out? Persuade me with that whisky velvet voice he uses when he wants me to do something I know I’ll regret in the morning?

…C’mon Walt, you know you want to do this…

I shove open the door and unfold myself from the car seat. It feels good to stretch my legs. I must have been asleep a long time. We’ve been on the road for two days, sleeping in cheap motels, paying with cash.

Separate beds. He hasn’t tried to touch me.

“Elevator’s that way,” he points out, and just as I’m looking at it, the elevator doors slide open.

It’s Mulder, bearing down on us at a fast jog. Krycek’s eyes slide to me, then back to Mulder. He pulls out his gun and points it at Mulder. “I tried to stop them, Mulder.”

“You wanted to kill me, Alex. Kill me just like you killed my father. Just don’t insult me trying to make me understand.”

My heart is slamming against my chest. I can’t get enough air. My hand goes into my pocket, automatically, looking for something, anything…I feel the cold, smooth barrel of a gun. I don’t remember how it got there. I don’t remember how I got here. I must have come with Mulder…why would I have been in Krycek’s car?

The two of them are facing each other down. Mulder looks calm, in control. Krycek has the gun, but he looks about ready to fly apart.

My finger tightens on the trigger. _Not again. Please_ …

“It’s going to take more bullets than you can ever fire to win this game…”

Images cascade over themselves like a pack of cards falling to the floor…

Alex…falling backwards..

…a pool of blood spreading over the garage floor…

…a pool of blood soaking into the rug…

Alex, a bleeding hole in his forehead, the light in his green eyes dying…

…cold eyes, an artificial arm pushing his gun toward me…

…a real arm of flesh and blood, reaching for me…his eyes pleading…

…over and over…

_No more_.

I grab Krycek by the arm and yank, spinning him around so that his gun points at my chest. “Pull the trigger, Alex.” I hold his arm in place. “Go ahead. If you’re going to kill anyone, kill me.”

Krycek doesn’t try to free himself from my grip. His expression doesn’t change. His lips are pressed together in a thin line, and there’s a tic shuddering beneath his left eye.

My fingers dig into his arm…hard. He winces slightly, but still…he just stands there, his green eyes riveted on my face.

“I think he’ll be okay now,” says Mulder. “He’s broken the sequence.”

“You better be right, shithead.” Krycek’s voice is husky. “I still haven’t forgiven you for the Hoover.”

“It was his choice…”

“Fuck you, Mulder. You and the freckle assed bitch you rode in here with. Walter…talk to me. Are you okay?”

“I don’t know. That depends. What…just happened?”

“Alex told me about the nightmares you’ve been having,” Mulder explains. “About shooting him. Sorry, Walter. That was my fuckup. I should never have tried to get creative. I wasn’t too worried, because we were planning on scrubbing all the fake memories once Operation Takedown was executed. Once the source memory was erased, the nightmares would have faded. Then you had to shoot the replicant Alex, and things suddenly got ugly. It’s dangerous to erase real memories…they aren’t grouped in a nice neat little package in your brain like the fake ones. It’s like trying to pull weeds that are too closely packed in there with the vegetables.”

My fingers loosen, and Krycek takes his arm back. He winces again as he rubs it.

“I figured that if we could replay the sequence, force you to relive the trauma, we could give it a better ending that would overwrite the bad one.”

“How did you know it would end differently?” I demand. I’m angry…I’m so fucking pissed at both of them that I’m shaking. “What if I had killed you again, you goddamn bastard!?”

“I was pretty sure you wouldn’t pull the trigger,” Mulder says. “But even if you had, nobody would have gotten killed.”

“Empty magazines.” Krycek bends down to retrieve my gun. “None of us were packing. Just in case guns changed hands.” He gently squeezes my shoulder. “I wouldn’t let that happen to you. Or to me,” he adds, with a wry quirk of his lips.

I turn my back on them…on him. There’s a lump in my throat that I can’t quite swallow away, and I can feel my knees trembling. I feel like there’s something inside me just waking up and it terrifies me, but I want it so badly that I just ache with it. “So what happens next?” I ask. My voice sounds harsh.

“Whatever you want, Walter.” I smell cinnamon. His body presses against my back and ass as if it belongs there, his warmth soothing the tremors I can’t seem to get under control. “Say the word. We’ll just get back in the car and keep driving.”

“To where?”

“You know where.” He takes a deep breath and lets it out in short puffs, as if he’s reciting a mantra inside his head. “Every single detail, Walter. It’s just the way I told you,” he whispers. “I’ve been putting it together for years. It’s the only way I’ve been able to survive this. Having to listen to you scream every single night. Knowing there wasn’t a damned thing I could do about them,” he hisses. “Not without flushing it all down the toilet.”

I can hear the anger in his voice. The self hatred. I know, from personal experience, how easy it is to rip yourself to shreds over a single decision. Playing it over and over in your mind. Regretting. Fantasizing about how it could have gone differently, until eventually, the fantasy is just too painful. “You did the right thing, Alex. It was too important to risk for any one man.”

“I knew you’d say that. Fucking noble bastard.” His breath puffs against the back of my neck in tiny gasps. “That was the only thing that kept me away. If I had to do it over again…no. I’d pop you with a trank and take you someplace isolated. Keep you chained to my four poster. Even if you hated me for it. Even if I missed the whole fucking show. But I didn’t, and you risked your life and sanity, you threw away years of your life…I didn’t have the right to steal that from you after you’d already paid the cost.”

“No. You didn’t.” A memory drifts into my grasp.

_“…once this starts, we have to see it through.” Mulder. Eager…impatient… “No halfway measures. No slip-ups. If they suspect anything you’re a dead man.”_

_“…I don’t like it, Walter. It’s not worth the risk.” Alex. Eyes wild with frustration and fury. Fingers digging into my arm. Knowing I’ve already made my decision. “It’s just a building, Walt.”_

I half turn; my fingers find his wrists and I pull him against me. “It’s over, Alex. We won. Let’s go home.”

“Ahem.” Mulder is watching both of us with amused tolerance. “I have orders to take you both downstairs for debriefing.”

“Orders?” Alex snorts. “You are so pussy whipped, Mulder.”

“And you’re not?” Mulder’s mouth tilts sarcastically. “I know why you really don’t want to go downstairs and face the music. By the way, they added a few more monitors and closed up all the blind spots, you know. Oh, didn’t you get that memo?” His eyes dance with malicious amusement. “C’mon, Alex…you really think we wouldn’t figure out why you hacked into the system to assign yourself this parking spot?”

Alex’s expression turns sullen. He curses under his breath.

“Langly was on surveillance the last time you stopped by. Funny…he always seems to be, when you’re scheduled for a visit.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Alex snorts.

“If it makes you feel any better, he always turns off the recorder for that device for about five minutes after you show.” Mulder is maintaining a determinedly straight face.

Alex’s expression turns resigned. “Probably makes himself a private copy,” he mutters under his breath.

Another image surfaces from the slowly rising maelstrom of memories. _Alex and I in a car. A parking garage. Not this one. Smaller. Darker. We were heading into a high level meeting. Alex was practically vibrating with tension, like a high voltage wire. I knew the meeting would be hard on him; too many questions, too few answers. I could picture him snapping under the pressure, like a broken power line, hissing and flailing about, and probably shooting a couple of thousand volts through people who we really didn’t want to piss off. I needed a way to drain off all that tension._ “Continuing the tradition?” I murmur into his ear.

He melts against me. “Best blow job I ever had.” His breathing grows rapid. “Sometimes I don’t even have to unzip. Just the memory is enough.”

Another memory surfaces _. That was the meeting where the Human Alliance was forged. The day our lives suddenly shifted into high gear._ Another memory… _Alex and Mulder and Scully and I…sitting in my apartment, clinking glasses filled with sparkling cider. Toasting Mulder…Scully…ourselves._

I stagger a little as the life I set aside five years ago comes exploding into my brain, each memory triggering another, like a line of fireworks on a long, connecting fuse.

Alex studies me. “Walter…what’s wrong?”

“Nothing. My memory…it’s coming back. Just making me a little dizzy.”

_The Human Alliance. Dedicated to fighting the alien infection threatening our species. Made up of politicians and scientists, hackers and hitmen, law enforcement officers and librarians._ In my head I can hear the speech Mulder gave, dressed in grey Armani, flanked by Scully and Byers.

We gave him a standing ovation. Of course, it wasn’t just for him. Scully’s team had developed the replicant test, which used nanocytes to analyze a subject’s biology. And the gunmen had figured out how to identify and intercept the alien transmissions. This allowed us to track their movements and targets, and their transcripts of intercepted messages convinced our foreign representatives that the threat was universal.

But it was Mulder’s speech that drew order and purpose from chaos and panic. His revelations shattered our lives and then rebuilt them. Before he spoke, even I had no idea how deeply they had burrowed into our society.

If anything Mulder said that day surprised Alex, he never showed it. But then, Alex never does.

The false memories and the nightmare feeling of helplessness that has gripped me for so long is draining away. Pushed aside by fears and longing and regrets that I lost when I let Scully’s team implant those false memories in me.

“I’m so sorry, Alex,” I whisper.

His body tenses. “For what?” he asks apprehensively.

“For what you had to go through. Watching me. For some of the bad nights.” My drinking got out of hand toward the end. Sometimes I’d wake up on the floor with no memory of what I did to put myself there. Just a hangover bad enough to keep me in bed all morning. And once, all my painkillers were missing.

I didn’t wonder much about it at the time. Just one more thing that was going to hell.

He sighs, and his body relaxes back against me. “The worst was the night you slept on the couch with my blanket. I…I had to let someone else take over for me.”

The was the night The Fugitive came up as I was channel surfing. I didn’t understand it at the time, why the movie reached out and gripped me. I remember going to the closet, burrowing beneath shoes and boxes. Pulling out an old blanket. Holding it against my face, drinking in the scent. Clutching it to my chest as if it could save me from the pain that was drowning me. Weeping until I sobbed, sobbing until I was screaming, screaming until I was dry heaving.

Waking up the next morning with the emptiness that made it possible for me to get up and dress and drive to work every day.

I stroke his silky hair. “I’ll make it up to you.”

“You don’t owe me anything.” Alex lets out a long, shuddering breath.

“You’re wrong. I owe you everything.” I grip his hand between my hands, holding it immobile as I brush my lips over his skin. “And you owe me everything. We gambled. We won. Let’s get this meeting over with so we can go collect our winnings.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Alex says hoarsely. He steps back out of my arms, and his expression shifts. Even though I’ve seen it a hundred times before, it still fascinates me, watching him transform. The lover melts into the assassin.

And yet, no matter what face he wears, he is always mine. My Alex.

I let them take that from us for far too long. It was worth the price, but I’ll never pay it again. “You ready to finish this? Behave, and I’ll make it worth your while afterwards.” The familiarity of our old ritual is like a soothing balm on my soul.

Alex’s eyes flicker involuntarily to the left, to the front seat of his car. The tip of his tongue comes out to moisten his lips. “I don’t know if I can,” he murmurs. “I’m pretty tense right now.”

I look over to where Mulder is standing, studying the ceiling supports with exaggerated impatience. “You go ahead, Mulder. We’ll be down in a few minutes.”

“Oh, for the…fine!”” Mulder gives us a glare before stomping off, complaining “Just remember, you get to explain to Scully why you were late to the meeting.”

Somehow, I don’t think she’s going to ask.


End file.
